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A New Theory of the Earth was a book written by William Whiston, in which he presented a description of the divine creation of the Earth and a posited global flood. It was published in 1696 and was well-received by Isaac Newton and John Locke. William Whiston William Whiston (December 9, 1667 - August 22, 1752), English divine and mathematician, was born at Norton in Leicestershire, of which village his father was rector. ...
Creation according to Genesis refers to the description of the creation of the heavens and the earth by God, as described in Genesis the first book of the Bible. ...
This article is on mythology involving great floods. ...
The year 1696 had the earliest equinoxes and solstices for 400 years in the Gregorian calendar, because this year is a leap year and the Gregorian calendar would have behaved like the Julian calendar since March 1500 had it have been in use that long. ...
Sir Isaac Newton in Knellers 1689 portrait Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727 by the Julian calendar in use in England at the time; or 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 by the Gregorian calendar) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemist who wrote...
John Locke John Locke (August 29, 1632–October 28, 1704) was a 17th century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. ...
The book is organized as follows:
- Introduction, discussing the text of Creation according to Genesis
- Book I: Lematta, discussing the premises and assumptions on which his argument is based;
- Book II: Hypotheses, discussing his model for the origin of the Earth;
- Book III: Phaenomena, discussing evidence predicted by his model;
- Book IV: Solutions, discussing how his model explains the evidence;
- Appendix: An abstract of his theory drawn from various sources.
Creation according to Genesis refers to the description of the creation of the heavens and the earth by God, as described in Genesis the first book of the Bible. ...
Introduction
In the introduction, Whiston discusses the Mosaic account of creation.
He argues for a literal interpretation of Genesis, writing: This article is about Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. ...
- "We must never forsake the plain, obvious, easy and natural sense, unless where the nature of the thing itself, parallel places, or evident reason, afford a solid and sufficient reason for so doing."
In so doing, he challenges allegorical and mythological interpretations of Genesis, concluding that: - "The Mosaic Creation is not a nice and philosophical account of the origin of all things; but a historical and true representation of the formation of our single Earth out of a confused Chaos, and of the successive and visible changes thereof each Day, till it became the habitation of mankind." (p.3)
He interprets the Genesis account of creation as being only of the prepration of the Earth for mankind, and not as an account of creation from nothing (ex nihilo). He draws this from the text, as the account speaks of the waters that existed before God's first creative act on the first day, implying that the Earth predates Genesis 1. Chaos derives from the Greek Χαος and may refer to: Science Chaos theory, a branch of mathematics. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
Earth, also known as the Earth or Terra, is the third planet outward from the Sun. ...
He interprets the account of "placing the heavenly bodies in the firmament" as simply being a consequence of the terrestrial frame of reference, for the heavenly bodies do in fact revolve about the Earth from the perspective of a man standing on the Earth. A frame of reference in physics is a set of axes which enable an observer to measure the aspect, position and motion of all points in a system relative to the reference frame. ...
He describes his Arianism, or the view that Jesus is subordinate to God but first in creation, a view considered heretical within much of Christianity. Arianism was a Christological view held by followers of Arius in the early Christian Church, claiming that Jesus Christ and God the Father were not always contemporary, seeing the Son as a divine being, created by the Father (and consequently inferior to Him) at some point in time, before which...
The neutrality and accuracy of this article are disputed. ...
The term God is ordinarily used to designate a singular, universal Supreme Being. ...
Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life, teachings, death by crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. ...
He also asserts that it is very reasonable to believe that man may well be simply one of many intelligent beings, and certainly not the highest before God. He wrote that humanity was fallen, and currently in a miserable state akin to probation. In Christian theology the fall is the notion that the original sin of Adam and Eves disobedience of God in the Garden of Eden brought about various changes in the perfectly created world, including illness, strife and death. ...
Probation is the suspension of a prison or jail sentence - the criminal who is on probation has been convicted of a crime, but instead of serving prison time, has been found by the Court to be amenable to probation and will be returned to the community for a period in...
He concludes the introduction with his three Postulata:
- "The obvious or literal sense of scripture is the true and redal one, where no evidence reason can be given to the contrary.
- That which is clearly accountable in a natural way, is not, without reason to be ascribed to a miraculous power.
- What ancient tradition asserts of the constitution of nature, or of the origin and primitive states of the world, is to be allowed for true, where ‘tis fully agreeable to scripture, reason, and philosophy."
Book 1: Lemmata Whiston begins by arguing for the existence of a human soul. He argues that the Newtonian laws of motion provide that matter may never move spontaneously, but only when acted upon by an outside force. He notes that humans, animals, and plants are able to move spontaneously, and concludes that they must be more than "mere matter," but, especially in the case of humans, is evidence of an incorporeal soul. The soul according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the ethereal substance — spirit (compare Hebrew rooah or nefesh) — particular to a unique living being. ...
Book 2,3, and 4: Phenomena In the next sections of his book, Whiston goes on to describe his theory of the creation of the Earth, and the flood. He asserted that the Earth was originally a comet, which God formed from its initial "chaos and void" into a habitable planet. He also argued that the flood itself was caused when the Earth passed through the tail of a comet, which, it was known by that time, are composed largely of water. His analysis was very detailed, and similar ideas were promoted in the 1960's by other creationists postulating causes for the global flood. However, many of them are in direct conflict with contemporary scientific understandings; and comets are not mentioned in flood accounts. Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around the world. ...
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